


Cautionary Tale

by havisham



Category: Der Rattenfänger von Hameln | The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Artists, Business Disputes, Child Death, Con Artists, Crueltide, Fairy Tale Curses, Gen, Magic, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 19:50:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17148050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: A ragged man comes to town, playing a tune that no one knows.(Or, pay your artists, a cautionary tale.)





	Cautionary Tale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_alchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/gifts).



It wasn’t the rats.

The rats came later, nibbling at the edge of the story, giving an explanation to why the ragged man, dressed in all sorts of colors, came to their town. He was a grinning man, with a loud, carrying voice. It was obvious to all that saw him that he was no ordinary beggar, or pilgrim, or merchant, indeed, for he asked for nothing, looked for nothing, and sold nothing one could buy. 

He set up a little household in the town square, ignoring all attempts to dissuade him. The mayor was summoned, but there was little he could do. The stranger would not be moved. 

“Well,” said the mayor at last, “if you must stay here, stranger, you must do something. Our town cannot feed those those cannot spin.” 

“I am no lily, sir,” said the ragged man. “But I can play for my supper.” 

He took out a set of pipes, the likes of which no one had seen before. Some said that the pipes were made of smooth and polished bone, and the bag was skin, with hair still attached; more prosaic people said it the pipes were made of birch wood and the bag was pigskin. All agreed that the magic that leaked out from the Piper’s instrument was frightful to listen to, discordant noise in the shape of music, though no one listening clamped their hands over their ears and moved away. All stood still as the Piper played. 

When his performance was over, the townsfolk showered him with guilders, begging him to play no more. The Piper made a show of how much their request offended him, but still, he smiled and held to the bargain -- until the next time he grew hungry and needed coin to buy bread. 

As strange as the Piper no doubt was, soon enough he became a part of the town’s landscape. During market-days, when farmers and merchants from other places would flood into the town, locals would point him out as their Piper, the Pied Piper of Hamelin. It became a point of pride for them. No other nearby town had such a person, not Rinteln nor Hotzmilden down the river. 

*

It was summer when the rats came. 

They came from the fields and swept through the town, eating everything that couldn’t be moved. Mothers who had carelessly left their children unattended would find their little darlings puffed up and crying from rat bites on their tender skin. 

The problem went to the mayor, as all problems would. At first, he suggested that a few rats couldn’t hurt anyone. When this failed to persuade, he agreed that something had to be done. The town fathers drafted men from the countryside to come with teams of terriers, small and fierce sharp-toothed dogs who yearned to tear into ratty flesh. 

But there were simply too many rats for that now. The streets of Hamelin became brown with rat fur, undulating like a river. 

It is not known who suggested using the Piper. Perhaps it was the Piper himself who suggested it, one day at the tavern, where the mayor had come to drown his sorrows. “I can rid you of the rats,” the Piper told him, drawing the mayor’s attention from his beer. 

“What would you do, Piper?” said the mayor bitterly, “play until they begged you to stop?” 

“If I did, what would you pay me?” asked the Piper, a sly look in his eye. 

“Whatever you asked -- this plague of rats has cost us a thousand guilders at least,” replied the mayor, who thought his chances for reelection vanishingly slim indeed. The Piper poured him another mug of beer, which he accepted gratefully.

*

The Piper played the rats to their watery grave in the River Weser and the good people of Hamelin sighed in relief. Finally, the world made sense again. Children could play in the streets without being bitten, and bakers could bake bread without their sacks of flour ripped into, and life could go back to how it had been before. 

Except -- 

“A thousand guilders you promised me,” said the Piper to the mayor. The mayor guffawed and asked if they were not friends. He had offered no such amount. A thousand guilders! Even a haughty prince of the church would have trouble paying such an amount, much less a town like theirs, whose livelihoods had been hurt by the recent plague -- of rats. 

“Besides,” said the mayor, “your deeds have made you famous throughout the countryside. They’re pulling rat corpses out of the Weser from as far downriver as Fulda! You’re famous! Isn’t the exposure enough for you?” 

The ragged man laughed. “You will regret your words, O mayor.”

“We can pay you fifty -- and that’s a fair price indeed,” said the mayor. “No one can call me a dishonest man. Fifty pieces of gold for an hour’s worth of piping is more than fair.” 

When word got out that the Piper wanted payment for his work, the town opinion was split. There were some who held with the mayor that the Piper asked for too much. Hadn’t they endured the Piper’s playing, his eccentricities, his foibles for so long? Couldn’t he give them a discount, at least? 

Others said that the mayor should give what he had promised, even if the Piper had had clearly tricked him, the foolhardy man that he was. 

In the end, the mayor prevailed. The Piper was paid his fifty guilders and disappeared from the town square for many months. As time passed, many forgot about him and about the rats. The mayor was re-elected. And when spring came to Hamelin, it seemed especially sweet. 

On the Feast Day of Saints John and Paul (lovers and the former eunuchs of Constantine, whose jealous friend had betrayed and beheaded them in secret) the Piper returned and took the children of Hamelin away. As evening drew near, the air was filled with the sound of parents calling for their children, their names blurring together into a wordless cry. 

The mayor, who was childless, could not say where the children went and why the Piper had taken them. Only three children remained to tell what had happened -- one who had been too slow to catch up with his friend, another who had been sleeping under an apple tree when the call went out, and another who had been working deep in his father’s cellar when the music came. 

They said the the Piper’s tune was beautiful, this time. It promised them many things, if they followed him. They would go to a land of magic and beauty, where no one hungered or were hurt. A beautiful place, where honest toil was rewarded, and wickedness had no place. 

The children grew pale as they described it, their bodies shaking with fever. They complained that they could still hear the persistent piping, ringing in their ears. Mad now, it was, and accompanied by the voices of their lost playmates. Soon, they too perished. Hamelin had no children, indeed, now. 

“There is no such place,” said the Widow Mueller, aghast. Her children, all six of them -- from ten years to two, were missing. “The Piper has killed my children because of the mayor’s greed and foolishness.” 

The widow’s words took root in all who heard her and in the end, a final rat joined his brothers in the River Weser. 

But that did not bring the children back. 

*

The story died as a story would when there was no child who would grow old as she told it. But still, a scape of memory survived, long enough for someone to write: "It is 100 years since our children left."

One hundred years was a long time, in the human memory. Long enough that when a ragged man, dressed in clothes that once been colorful, came to the gates, he was let in easily enough. It was spring, after all, and there was a need for pipers, for dancing, rat-catchers, for the vermin, and entertainment -- for the children, once again. 

 


End file.
